This means that the results can sound grittier and less musical – depending on the frequency of the original waves – and that the process can result in new frequency content added below the original waves. When you distort multiple waveforms together, new partials are then added at the sum and difference frequencies of the two original waves. In the case of straightforward harmonic distortion – applying distortion to a single waveform – new harmonic series partials are added above the frequency of the original waveform.

This is the result of intermodulation, which is what happens when we distort two or more waveforms at once.

A three note chord – comprised of the root, perfect fifth and octave above the root note – doesn’t sound like much played ‘clean’ but a healthy dose of distortion and the result is the familiar, rich ‘power chord’ sound. A distortion effect won’t sound identical on all sources due to the way distortion creates new harmonic content, the results can vary depending not only on the level of the audio used, but the pitch and complexity. In the digital realm, for one thing, the floating point maths used by modern DAWs – resulting in vast amounts of potential headroom – means that tracks can end up feeling cold and ‘digital’ due to an absolute lack of natural distortion.Ĭreatively, distortion can do very interesting things to sounds that can change depending on the type of source material used. As the decades have gone on though, it’s increasingly been viewed as an important creative effect. In the early days of recording technology, distortion was often seen as an unwanted side effect of misused gear or recordings made at the wrong level. It’s this effect, used with a light touch, that’s responsible for much of what we know as ‘analogue warmth’.

This results in a more gradual harmonic distortion that increases as you raise the level of the input signal, resulting in pleasing new harmonics and a slow rolling off of high frequencies. Hard clipping can sound harsh and abrasive, but most analogue devices – and plugins that emulate them – have a softer and more subtle response. The most extreme example of this is what’s known as hard clipping, where a device with a hard limit on the amplitude of a waveform – such as an analogue to digital converter – effectively lops off the top of the waveform, turning a sine wave into a square.

How to distort audio